


Really. Fucking. Practical.

by PlotQueen



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: BAMF!Stiles, Gen, Stiles-centric, baseball bat of DOOM (tm), or at least icky black stuff that happens when you mix mountain ash and a wolf bite, sarcasm isn't his ONLY defense, there will be blood - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-27
Updated: 2012-09-27
Packaged: 2017-11-15 03:44:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlotQueen/pseuds/PlotQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many ways in which Stiles Stilinski is not like Gerard Argent. But there is one where he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Really. Fucking. Practical.

**Author's Note:**

> Violence. Graphic violence. With a bat. You have been warned.

He’d love to say that it’s the ADHD that’s made him so jittery. Antsy, jumpy, constantly moving— which is how Stiles finds himself back outside of the warehouse where Jackson lived and died and lived again. The warehouse where he finally gave up the ghost for Lydia (no matter how much he was going to wind up lying to Scott about that), the warehouse where Scott basically told Derek, “Fuck you,” the warehouse where the pack had nearly fucking died.

Stiles would love to say that, but he knows better.

The baseball bat his mom used to keep behind the door is a steady weight at his side, the wooden end sometimes scraping along the ground between broken concrete and weeds. Stiles pays it no mind as his fever bright eyes follow the trail of blackness Gerard left when he made his escape.

When he considers the condition that the old bastard was in, compares it with his knowledge of when Derek himself was poisoned with wolfsbane, Stiles doesn’t think that Gerard could have gotten too far. Certainly not as far as he’d get if Chris Argent’s suggestion of everyone going home, healing, and regrouping before starting a search was followed. Stiles hadn’t called bullshit when Argent suggested it, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t thinking it.

So instead he’s following the dribbles and splotches of a hopefully dying man as the sun starts to suggest it’s thinking of rising. Stiles’ fingers clench around the neck of the bat as he pauses at a slightly larger puddle. There are places in it that look like something has been dragged through it. Probably Gerard losing strength and having to scrabble there like a cockroach until he can keep crawling away like the parasite he is, Stiles thinks venomously.

His face aches. His lip stings. His torso feels like one giant bruise, and even worse when he breathes. He thinks, as his skin twitches and tingles, that he can still feel electricity coursing through him. Not much, no, but enough that if he ever sees Erica and Boyd again he’s not sure he’ll be able to look them in the eye without remembering the shrill wet screams that he’d cried as Gerard tortured him.

The bitch of it is that Stiles doesn’t even think he’s gotten the worst end of the deal. Derek had been on the wrong end of a crazy Argent before, and Erica and Boyd at least could physically recover. But Allison? She’s never going to be able to look herself in the mirror again without remembering what she’s done.

It’s not nice of him, but Stiles finds a bitter justice in that. Better than anyone else, he knows _everything_ that Allison has done in her quest to avenge her mother’s suicide. It’s only because he knows how Gerard played her that Stiles hasn’t already decided to corner her and tell her exactly what her mother was doing when she got the bite.

He stumbles a bit over a piece of broken asphalt because his eyes are glued to a giant stain in front of him. There are parts of it that are distinctly man-shaped, not to mention drag marks leading from it. The internal breakdown had obviously kicked in with a vengeance at this point. Stiles hefts the bat to a shoulder, then slide it across both to dangle his hands from either end as he casually saunters after the drag marks.

He finds Gerard in less than a minute.

“Mr. Stilinski,” Gerard burbles through a smallish gush of black bile. “Come to seek retribution on a helpless old man?”

Stiles huffs a snort that stretches the bruised and broken skin of his face. The pull on his lip is sharp and he tastes a little fresh tang of blood. “You would know everything about helpless, wouldn’t you Gerard, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal?” The insouciant tone is deliberate, the flick of fingers from his right hand meant to be saucy.

Gerard says nothing and just watches him. Or at least Stiles thinks he does; the black fluid congealed around his eyes, crusted across his face, makes it a little difficult to be sure.

Stiles nudges Gerard’s leg with the toe of one sneaker. The result is a boneless little roll of his body. Stiles, however, remains cautious. He studies Gerard for a moment before crouching down beside him, unhooking the bat from his shoulders and resting it across his thighs.

“You’re not looking too good there,” he offers, eyes sharp. “But you look a lot better than you should for a guy who just combined a shit load of mountain ash internally with the bite.” He smirks a little as his gaze settles back on Gerard’s face. “How’s that gift working out for you so far?”

Gerard’s head twitches and twists, now Stiles can see his eyes. The shine of them is easily found amidst the drying black death. “Always quick with your mouth, boy.”

Stiles’ smirk grows ever wider. He doesn’t flinch at the stretch and pain, just kind of uses it. “Flattery will get you nowhere, old man. But you know what I don’t understand? Why me? Why’d you bother with me? You already had two betas, you had Allison under your thumb, and as far as you knew Scott was your bitch. So why me?”

“Not pack, but still close to all of the wolves.”

Stiles doesn’t roll his eyes, because no, not really. Erica has assaulted him how many times? And Derek throws him into walls. Better to not even think about Scott and his inability to think with anything other than his dick when Allison is around. Or on his brain. (And sure, he’s Batman to Erica’s Catwoman, and Derek actually kind of trusts him, and Scott… Well, two out of three isn’t bad.)

Gerard’s tongue flicks out, a bloated black thing that makes Stiles’ stomach roil. “You’re just the weakest link, Mr. Stilinski.”

There’s something there, but Stiles can’t decide what it is. Gerard’s face shifts a little more and Stiles darts upright—

Just in time to avoid the filthy, clawed hand that reaches for him. Pointed, dripping nails nick the denim of his jeans, but his skin is clear as Stiles takes a half step back. Yeah, there was something there, right beneath the part where Gerard wasn’t already dead and apparently had the beginnings of a fancy scaly coat and paralytic claws all his own.

But Gerard is still weak, his transition to kanima incomplete. It may never be complete if left on its own, a thing that Stiles had no intention of allowing. With a grimace and a grunt Stiles brings the bat down across Gerard’s wrists, one after the other. Sure, they’ll heal until the bastard is dead, but in the state he’s in? They’ll heal _slow_.

Gerard hacks a laugh, but Stiles is even more alert now. “Settling for damage instead of going for the kill,” he mocks Stiles, seemingly uncaring of the filth that spills from his mouth along with the words. “Weak, just like your alpha, just like my son.”

Insults aren’t new territory; Stiles brushes them to the side. “So I should be more like you then? Kidnapping teenagers, beating them, torturing them. Twisting up my granddaughter’s mind so bad that in the blink of an eye she’s someone none of her friend’s know?”

Gerard’s arm twitches again and Stiles has the bat in motion before it can do more than that. The left side of his side gets caved in under the force of wood and a full from-the-hips swing. Gerard wheezes in pain.

“I'm more like you than you know,” Stiles says coolly, voice even. He shoulders the bat once more, satisfied that Gerard isn’t going to move for a few minutes at least. “See, people like us? We’re dangerous. You, because you’re a sick, psychotic old bastard. And me? I'm practical. Really. Fucking. Practical.”

Then he smashes Gerard’s head in.

The first swing of the bat caves in the side, the second the top, and the third turns the rest to mush. For everything Stiles feels he lacks in stature, for all the times he has measured himself against the physiques of Jackson or Derek or Danny or even Scott, Stiles knows that he is not weak. He may joke and play up his lean stature, but Stiles is. not. weak.

And he never will be again.

He sprinkles powdered wolfsbane over the mess left where a head should be and waits for a while to make sure that there are no new scales, no weird slime cocoon that will give Gerard wings and bigger fangs and the chance to have another go at anyone Stiles cares about. Because Stiles does his research, and even if it was only a half formed idea of what needed to be done, he’d asked questions before everyone adjourned. So he knows what he might have to expect. (But that’s alright, because he will beat Gerard into _pieces_ if he has to just to stop him from regenerating as a kanima.)

Stiles just crouches there, one elbow on a knee, the other hand holding the bat where it stands against the ground, black blood and brains dripping and sticking to the wood. But after an hour when nothing has happened, Stiles feels fairly comfortable with Gerard Argents timely and very permanent death.

He gets to his feet once again, his body protesting, ribs creaking as he stretches a little, pulling at the bruises along his sides. But it’s kind of a clean ache now, Stiles thinks.

He hasn’t technically touched the body, and it’s not like someone isn’t going to come hunting it up. Probably Chris Argent, if Stiles is honest with himself. Probably to try and save his father and bring him back from the Dark Side of the Code. So Stiles is also comfortable with pulling off the ratty flannel shirt he’s wearing and wiping the bat down, sending blobs of Gerard Argent’s head flying onto his body.

Trace evidence can kiss his ass.

Stiles is back home before the sun is fully risen, the baseball bat cleaned and bleached, the clothes he was wearing already in the washer, the ruined flannel tucked deep in a garbage can three streets down and beneath a truly disgusting pile of garbage. Stiles is still dripping when he pulls on new boxers, jeans, and clutches another shirt in his hands as he stares at himself in the bathroom mirror.

147 pounds of pale skin and fragile bones. He wonders for a moment who he is now. He thinks about the baseball bat and decides that he doesn’t really mind. Then he pulls on his t-shirt and heads back downstairs to make breakfast for his dad.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumble with me](http://plotqueen.tumblr.com).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I Will Show You Fear in a Handful of Dust](https://archiveofourown.org/works/721240) by [Diomedeidae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diomedeidae/pseuds/Diomedeidae)




End file.
